y country's ills--
The tempest bursting from the waste of Time
On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.

Nature's dark side is heeded now--
(Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)--
A child may read the moody brow
Of yon black mountain lone.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

The Conflict of Convictions.[1]
(1860-1.)

On starry heights
A bugle wails the long recall;
Derision stirs the deep abyss,
Heaven's ominous silence over all.
Return, return, O eager Hope,
And face man's latter fall.
Events, they make the dreamers quail;
Satan's old age is strong and hale,
A disciplined captain, gray in skill,
And Raphael a white enthusiast still;
Dashed aims, at which Christ's martyrs pale,
Shall Mammon's slaves fulfill?

(_Dismantle the fort,
Cut down the fleet--
Battle no more shall be!
While the fields for fight in aeons to come
Congeal beneath the sea._)

The terrors of truth and dart of death
To faith alike are vain;
Though comets, gone a thousand years,
Return again,
Patient she stands--she can no more--
And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.

(_At a stony gate,
A statue of stone,
Weed overgrown--
Long 'twill wait!_)

But God his former mind retains,
Confirms his old decree;
The generations are inured to pains,
And strong Necessity
Surges, and heaps Time's strand with wrecks.
The People spread like a weedy grass,
The thing they will they bring to pass,
And prosper to the apoplex.
The rout it herds around the heart,
The ghost is yielded in the gloom;
Kings wag their heads--Now save thyself
Who wouldst rebuild the world in bloom.

(_Tide-mark
And top of the ages' strike,
Verge where they called the world to come,
The last advance of life--
Ha ha, the rust on the Iron Dome!_)

Nay, but revere the hid event;
In the cloud a sword is girded on,
I mark a twinkling in the tent
Of Michael the warrior one.
Senior wisdom suits not now,
The light is on the youthful brow.

(_Ay, in caves the miner see:
His forehead bears a blinking light;
Darkness so he feebly braves--
A meagre wight!_)

But He who rules is old--is old;
Ah! faith is warm, but heaven with age is cold.

(_Ho ho, ho ho,
The cloistered doubt
Of olden times